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The public at large will never be swayed to use less convenient alternatives for ethical reasons. But even so, if a small, dedicated group of people are convinc

The public at large will never be swayed to use less convenient alternatives for ethical reasons. But even so, if a small, dedicated group of people are convinced, they can keep the ethical alternative just alive enough that it remains a somewhat viable alternative. I don't think vegetarianism will ever be the norm, but there are enough vegetarians to create a market for vegetarian food. This creates options for people who don't want to eat meat for ethical reasons, increasing their freedom to live life the way they want without it being prohibitively inconvenient. A similar argument can be made for desktop Linux or using Firefox.

sabujp 10y ago
googlers need more kale in their diet
TAForObvReasons 10y ago
Vegetarianism can be the norm, but for that to happen one of two things must happen: either the cost of meat has to be prohibitively expensive ("the stick") or vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large ("the carrot"). Neither of those things have happened yet. For Firefox to gain market share, either the perceived "cost" of using Chrome has to skyrocket or Firefox has to be superior for a common use case. Ethical arguments attempt to do the former, but imho nothing short of google charging for chrome will increase the cost. Mozilla needs a killer web app that people want to use. Something like gmail that attracts millions of people, with features added to Firefox (new APIs or whatever) to make the app much more effective.
- ajbetteridge 10y ago
  "the carrot" I see what you did there.
- qplex 10y ago
  People are far removed from seeing the actual results of their decisions. Humans are also very good at self deception. Even if you sort of know your beef is butchered, it carries little meaning since you never have to see it happen. Same goes for Google stealing your data or Apple making pretty phones with slave labor. Basically pretty much everybody needs to be smacked hard with a stick now and then and told what kind of picture they are really painting.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Humans are also very good at self deception. Even if you sort of know your beef is butchered, it carries little meaning since you never have to see it happen. I never understood this argument vis-a-vis butchering, since it implies pastoral farmers are particularly immoral people, unlike "regular" people who would stop their behaviour if only they'd see the results. Is that really your view? In my opinion, the opposite is true: growing up ignorant of how it works is the only reason why they may be shocked when they find out. If it was a common sight, people would be OK with it just like most people growing up in farms are.
    - boggydepot 10y ago
      In my opinion, if one knows that an action is not right and still do it, then one would be immoral - common sight or not. 'butchering' is probably a grey area whether it is right or wrong. But overuse of anti-biotics and bad farming conditions causing disastrous health issues in humans is easily wrong. edit: humans however are not perfect moral beings, I for example am super tempted to grab a slice of free pizza (which contains lots of butchered suffering animal products) here in the office. but in righting my comment here, I find some strength in fighting temptation.
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      I've always been conflicted on the "don't know how it's made" argument. On one hand, I've known people who learned about farming practices and butchery and were horrified (but most went back to meat after a brief stretch of dissonance). On the other hand, I grew up knowing what butchering an animal involves. It never turned me (or a lot of other people) off of eating those animals. I think you're right - it's not that ignorance is required, just that the moment of discovery is a bit shocking.
    - qplex 10y ago
      The argument does not imply that killing animals for food is wrong, but that it is wrong to disconnect people from that reality and expect them to make moral decisions.
  - vixen99 10y ago
- sametmax 10y ago
  > vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large That is just a question of habit and education. If you are used to veggie food, the meat is not appealing to you. Tastes are things we build, not stuff we are born with. Vegetarianism will not become a norm, if it does, because of one factor only. For such a strong cultural habit, you need several factors. It may happen under a combination of the following: - meat production is costing too much ressources (land, water, energy, etc) compared to the food it produce - meat production does manage to feed the growing propulation; - mass meat production will revealed to be more and more unhealthy, either by nature, because of the artificial products we use for it, or because of the pollution it causes; - it's effect on global warming will trigger a similar reaction as the one we had about CFC. I doubt it though. I see more and more people consumming less meat around me, I'm a vegetarian myself, but I can't see a shift happening any time soon. BTW, morality is a very weak factor. It never stopped people to drink and do something stupid, it never stopped people from bying iphones built by children, and it never made them choose a proper president.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    >it never made them choose a proper president. The election system in the US prevents that from ever happening.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  > For Firefox to gain market share, either the perceived "cost" of using Chrome has to skyrocket or Firefox has to be superior for a common use case. It wouldn't hurt either if we nerds, pros, superusers etc etc stopped spreading FUD like "Chrome is way better".
  - angry-hacker 10y ago
    It's not FUD since Firefox does have many flaws. While I don't like Google and Chrome, for an average user it is better to use.
    - endemic 10y ago
      Just curious, why is Chrome better for you? I switched back to Firefox after e10s landed, and tbh they are now functionally equivalent (for me, at least). I now choose Firefox because I find myself more aligned with Mozilla's philosophy, and to promote cross-browser consistency.
      - dkuntz2 10y ago
        Is e10s the default now? I thought you had to enable it yourself, and some extensions weren't huge fans.
        endemic 10y ago
        I had been using beta/etc. versions. Yeah I've also heard that some extensions don't work within a sandbox, but I'm not really an extensions-type person.
- FatalBaboon 10y ago
  One argument that has good traction lately around me is data privacy. It remains the killer argument of Firefox against Chrome. What's old is new again.
- AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
  Firefox for Android allows you to install extensions. Most notably, it allows you to install an adblocker like uBlock Origin. Chrome for Android does not. I'd consider that a killer feature.
  - Can_Not 10y ago
    Also Firefox on mobile is already much better.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >Vegetarianism can be the norm, but for that to happen one of two things must happen: either the cost of meat has to be prohibitively expensive ("the stick") or vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large ("the carrot"). Neither of those things have happened yet. That's not really true, about them being appealing. There's several Italian pasta dishes that are quite tasty which I frequently make for myself because they're super-cheap: spaghetti, penne, etc. Pasta plus a tomato-based sauce is totally vegetarian AFAIK, and what kind of weirdo doesn't like spaghetti? (Of course, a lot of people eat it with meat sauce or meatballs, but that's not necessary for the dish.) There's also macaroni & cheese; lots of people like that. Of course, the problem with these dishes is that 1) personally I don't want to eat spaghetti or pasta every single night, and I'm probably not alone there, and 2)you don't get much protein this way. The problem with vegetarianism is that there just aren't a lot of good plant-based protein sources that are actually appealing, and you need this for a balanced diet. Meat is a simple and easy way to get lots of high-quality protein into your diet. I believe vegetarianism is going to die out in the next century, as artificially-grown meats are developed and commercialized. If you can eat filet-minion-quality beef cheaply and without having to kill a cow to get it, why bother being a vegetarian? >Mozilla needs a killer web app that people want to use. Something like gmail that attracts millions of people, with features added to Firefox (new APIs or whatever) to make the app much more effective. The problem with this idea is that it breaks the whole idea of the web, which rests on open standards. Web browsers aren't supposed to be walled gardens that are incompatible with each other, they're all supposed to show web content the same way. We should not be going back to the bad old days of site X needing browser A to work. The main thing that differentiates browsers is features and extensions. Edge, for instance, is a mostly unusable browser because it doesn't support all the ad-blocking extensions that Chrome and Firefox do. Performance is also a big feature, and Firefox has been lagging there for some time by sticking to having a single process. Personally I think that Firefox would be fine if they'd stop wasting time and effort on bullshit features like Pocket and work on making it the fastest, most memory-efficient browser possible, which also best supports uBlock Origin and other advanced features. It'd probably also be a good idea if they could support Netflix viewing out-of-the-box the way Chrome does. If they got all that right and working really well, and touted themselves as being "spyware-free", they'd have sufficient marketshare to be relevant and hold their position, which is all they really need to do. They don't need to be #1, they just need to be large and influential enough to keep the others in line and prevent fragmentation of the web like we had in the IE6 days. If 40% of the market wants to be suckers and use Edge and look at copious ads, let them; they don't matter as long as they're not a clear majority.
Razengan 10y ago
> The public at large will never be swayed to use less convenient alternatives for ethical reasons. There have been countless practices which were once the convenient norm but are now seen as archaic or barbaric, at least in some parts of the world; Slavery, serfdom, monarchies, dowry, arranged marriage, virgin sacrifices, involuntary circumcision, blood feuds, war crimes, excessive pollution... I'm sure the transition period in each of those cases was anything but convenient, and in some places it's still nigh impossible to convince people to stop these practices. I think it's not so much "swaying" the public at large but continuing to provide sufficient education to them, and the technology to ease the transition, then at some point the transition just happens on its own. Of course the inverse is also possible and people sometimes revert to old and worse practices.
- asveikau 10y ago
  > Slavery, serfdom, monarchies, dowry, arranged marriage, virgin sacrifices, involuntary circumcision, blood feuds, war crimes, excessive pollution... To be clear, we are comparing all this to using chrome and having browser homogeny?
  - Razengan 10y ago
    I found that amusing while writing it too :P but the comment I replied to brought up vegetarianism and seemed to be making a general point about ethics vs. convenience.
    - asveikau 10y ago
      I think it illustrates that people can disagree with what constitutes unethical actions - the higher the requirement that everybody agree on what is unethical, the more heinous the crime has to be. So most of us will agree on the items in your list, but eating meat or using Chrome will be harder to get consensus on.
- patates 10y ago
  > involuntary circumcision I'm a theological non-cognitivist, coming from a Muslim family. Putting involuntary at the front does not make circumcisions which had the consent of an underage kid OK. I'm very sensitive about this, and while I love my parents, I still feel violated because of their decision. Just wanted to share. No offense or anything taken from your comment of course.
jonotime 10y ago
OP here. Funny how this conversation sided into vegetarianism. Because I am one who sides with the moral issues - as a vegan, Firefox, Linux user. I represent the ones mentioned here who will go the extra mile, which is typically the harder route to do what is right, not what is easiest. However, I dont think this route is for everyone. And I think legitimate competition between browser features is key. I do use both browsers, but only when necessary with Chrome (Chromecast and Netflix, some Google products like Photos). However I think there is not a concrete answer which browser is a better user experience. And these things change over time. Yes, when Chrome came out it was a great fast experience (mostly because there were no addons and there was no cruft in the beginning), but Firefox overtook it in the benchmarks several times since. Its been back and forth. These reputations are strong, but dangerous. I'm a developer and still come up against the "Java is slow" argument. I'm no fan of Java, but I find it to be anything but slow these days. Yes, back in the early applet days it had a bad name and decades later it cant shake that reputation. This is technology! Things change fast. Dont get stuck in the fud.

sabujp 10y ago

googlers need more kale in their diet

TAForObvReasons 10y ago

Vegetarianism can be the norm, but for that to happen one of two things must happen: either the cost of meat has to be prohibitively expensive ("the stick") or vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large ("the carrot"). Neither of those things have happened yet. For Firefox to gain market share, either the perceived "cost" of using Chrome has to skyrocket or Firefox has to be superior for a common use case. Ethical arguments attempt to do the former, but imho nothing short of google charging for chrome will increase the cost. Mozilla needs a killer web app that people want to use. Something like gmail that attracts millions of people, with features added to Firefox (new APIs or whatever) to make the app much more effective.

ajbetteridge 10y ago
"the carrot" I see what you did there.
qplex 10y ago
People are far removed from seeing the actual results of their decisions. Humans are also very good at self deception. Even if you sort of know your beef is butchered, it carries little meaning since you never have to see it happen. Same goes for Google stealing your data or Apple making pretty phones with slave labor. Basically pretty much everybody needs to be smacked hard with a stick now and then and told what kind of picture they are really painting.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Humans are also very good at self deception. Even if you sort of know your beef is butchered, it carries little meaning since you never have to see it happen. I never understood this argument vis-a-vis butchering, since it implies pastoral farmers are particularly immoral people, unlike "regular" people who would stop their behaviour if only they'd see the results. Is that really your view? In my opinion, the opposite is true: growing up ignorant of how it works is the only reason why they may be shocked when they find out. If it was a common sight, people would be OK with it just like most people growing up in farms are.
  - boggydepot 10y ago
    In my opinion, if one knows that an action is not right and still do it, then one would be immoral - common sight or not. 'butchering' is probably a grey area whether it is right or wrong. But overuse of anti-biotics and bad farming conditions causing disastrous health issues in humans is easily wrong. edit: humans however are not perfect moral beings, I for example am super tempted to grab a slice of free pizza (which contains lots of butchered suffering animal products) here in the office. but in righting my comment here, I find some strength in fighting temptation.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    I've always been conflicted on the "don't know how it's made" argument. On one hand, I've known people who learned about farming practices and butchery and were horrified (but most went back to meat after a brief stretch of dissonance). On the other hand, I grew up knowing what butchering an animal involves. It never turned me (or a lot of other people) off of eating those animals. I think you're right - it's not that ignorance is required, just that the moment of discovery is a bit shocking.
  - qplex 10y ago
    The argument does not imply that killing animals for food is wrong, but that it is wrong to disconnect people from that reality and expect them to make moral decisions.
- vixen99 10y ago
sametmax 10y ago
> vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large That is just a question of habit and education. If you are used to veggie food, the meat is not appealing to you. Tastes are things we build, not stuff we are born with. Vegetarianism will not become a norm, if it does, because of one factor only. For such a strong cultural habit, you need several factors. It may happen under a combination of the following: - meat production is costing too much ressources (land, water, energy, etc) compared to the food it produce - meat production does manage to feed the growing propulation; - mass meat production will revealed to be more and more unhealthy, either by nature, because of the artificial products we use for it, or because of the pollution it causes; - it's effect on global warming will trigger a similar reaction as the one we had about CFC. I doubt it though. I see more and more people consumming less meat around me, I'm a vegetarian myself, but I can't see a shift happening any time soon. BTW, morality is a very weak factor. It never stopped people to drink and do something stupid, it never stopped people from bying iphones built by children, and it never made them choose a proper president.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >it never made them choose a proper president. The election system in the US prevents that from ever happening.
reitanqild 10y ago
> For Firefox to gain market share, either the perceived "cost" of using Chrome has to skyrocket or Firefox has to be superior for a common use case. It wouldn't hurt either if we nerds, pros, superusers etc etc stopped spreading FUD like "Chrome is way better".
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  It's not FUD since Firefox does have many flaws. While I don't like Google and Chrome, for an average user it is better to use.
  - endemic 10y ago
    Just curious, why is Chrome better for you? I switched back to Firefox after e10s landed, and tbh they are now functionally equivalent (for me, at least). I now choose Firefox because I find myself more aligned with Mozilla's philosophy, and to promote cross-browser consistency.
    - dkuntz2 10y ago
      Is e10s the default now? I thought you had to enable it yourself, and some extensions weren't huge fans.
      - endemic 10y ago
        I had been using beta/etc. versions. Yeah I've also heard that some extensions don't work within a sandbox, but I'm not really an extensions-type person.
FatalBaboon 10y ago
One argument that has good traction lately around me is data privacy. It remains the killer argument of Firefox against Chrome. What's old is new again.
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
Firefox for Android allows you to install extensions. Most notably, it allows you to install an adblocker like uBlock Origin. Chrome for Android does not. I'd consider that a killer feature.
- Can_Not 10y ago
  Also Firefox on mobile is already much better.
Grishnakh 10y ago
>Vegetarianism can be the norm, but for that to happen one of two things must happen: either the cost of meat has to be prohibitively expensive ("the stick") or vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large ("the carrot"). Neither of those things have happened yet. That's not really true, about them being appealing. There's several Italian pasta dishes that are quite tasty which I frequently make for myself because they're super-cheap: spaghetti, penne, etc. Pasta plus a tomato-based sauce is totally vegetarian AFAIK, and what kind of weirdo doesn't like spaghetti? (Of course, a lot of people eat it with meat sauce or meatballs, but that's not necessary for the dish.) There's also macaroni & cheese; lots of people like that. Of course, the problem with these dishes is that 1) personally I don't want to eat spaghetti or pasta every single night, and I'm probably not alone there, and 2)you don't get much protein this way. The problem with vegetarianism is that there just aren't a lot of good plant-based protein sources that are actually appealing, and you need this for a balanced diet. Meat is a simple and easy way to get lots of high-quality protein into your diet. I believe vegetarianism is going to die out in the next century, as artificially-grown meats are developed and commercialized. If you can eat filet-minion-quality beef cheaply and without having to kill a cow to get it, why bother being a vegetarian? >Mozilla needs a killer web app that people want to use. Something like gmail that attracts millions of people, with features added to Firefox (new APIs or whatever) to make the app much more effective. The problem with this idea is that it breaks the whole idea of the web, which rests on open standards. Web browsers aren't supposed to be walled gardens that are incompatible with each other, they're all supposed to show web content the same way. We should not be going back to the bad old days of site X needing browser A to work. The main thing that differentiates browsers is features and extensions. Edge, for instance, is a mostly unusable browser because it doesn't support all the ad-blocking extensions that Chrome and Firefox do. Performance is also a big feature, and Firefox has been lagging there for some time by sticking to having a single process. Personally I think that Firefox would be fine if they'd stop wasting time and effort on bullshit features like Pocket and work on making it the fastest, most memory-efficient browser possible, which also best supports uBlock Origin and other advanced features. It'd probably also be a good idea if they could support Netflix viewing out-of-the-box the way Chrome does. If they got all that right and working really well, and touted themselves as being "spyware-free", they'd have sufficient marketshare to be relevant and hold their position, which is all they really need to do. They don't need to be #1, they just need to be large and influential enough to keep the others in line and prevent fragmentation of the web like we had in the IE6 days. If 40% of the market wants to be suckers and use Edge and look at copious ads, let them; they don't matter as long as they're not a clear majority.

Razengan 10y ago

> The public at large will never be swayed to use less convenient alternatives for ethical reasons. There have been countless practices which were once the convenient norm but are now seen as archaic or barbaric, at least in some parts of the world; Slavery, serfdom, monarchies, dowry, arranged marriage, virgin sacrifices, involuntary circumcision, blood feuds, war crimes, excessive pollution... I'm sure the transition period in each of those cases was anything but convenient, and in some places it's still nigh impossible to convince people to stop these practices. I think it's not so much "swaying" the public at large but continuing to provide sufficient education to them, and the technology to ease the transition, then at some point the transition just happens on its own. Of course the inverse is also possible and people sometimes revert to old and worse practices.

asveikau 10y ago
> Slavery, serfdom, monarchies, dowry, arranged marriage, virgin sacrifices, involuntary circumcision, blood feuds, war crimes, excessive pollution... To be clear, we are comparing all this to using chrome and having browser homogeny?
- Razengan 10y ago
  I found that amusing while writing it too :P but the comment I replied to brought up vegetarianism and seemed to be making a general point about ethics vs. convenience.
  - asveikau 10y ago
    I think it illustrates that people can disagree with what constitutes unethical actions - the higher the requirement that everybody agree on what is unethical, the more heinous the crime has to be. So most of us will agree on the items in your list, but eating meat or using Chrome will be harder to get consensus on.
patates 10y ago
> involuntary circumcision I'm a theological non-cognitivist, coming from a Muslim family. Putting involuntary at the front does not make circumcisions which had the consent of an underage kid OK. I'm very sensitive about this, and while I love my parents, I still feel violated because of their decision. Just wanted to share. No offense or anything taken from your comment of course.

jonotime 10y ago

OP here. Funny how this conversation sided into vegetarianism. Because I am one who sides with the moral issues - as a vegan, Firefox, Linux user. I represent the ones mentioned here who will go the extra mile, which is typically the harder route to do what is right, not what is easiest. However, I dont think this route is for everyone. And I think legitimate competition between browser features is key. I do use both browsers, but only when necessary with Chrome (Chromecast and Netflix, some Google products like Photos). However I think there is not a concrete answer which browser is a better user experience. And these things change over time. Yes, when Chrome came out it was a great fast experience (mostly because there were no addons and there was no cruft in the beginning), but Firefox overtook it in the benchmarks several times since. Its been back and forth. These reputations are strong, but dangerous. I'm a developer and still come up against the "Java is slow" argument. I'm no fan of Java, but I find it to be anything but slow these days. Yes, back in the early applet days it had a bad name and decades later it cant shake that reputation. This is technology! Things change fast. Dont get stuck in the fud.